Loner blamed kidnap ordeal for pics of colleagues
ALONER pharmacy worker who spent 12 years building an online library of indecent images of children and violent fantasies about the date-rape drug Rohypnol has walked free.
Richard Brierley, of Romiley, was arrested after police found indecent images plus documents containing fictional selfpenned accounts of the abduction, rape and torture of work colleagues.
Officers also found covert pictures of children at a local school.
Brierley, a devout churchgoer, admitted wrongdoing but claimed he had been left a recluse after being abducted in 1994 and held hostage by a kidnapper who was later jailed.
At Manchester Minshull Street court, Brierley, 48, admitted 19 charges of making indecent photographs of children between 2005 and 2017 and one of distributing photographs.
He was given two years’ jail, suspended for two years. He was also ordered to get treatment in a Sex Offender programme and sign the Sex Offender Register for 10 years.
His laptop, tablet and various other devices were seized and a total of 177 still or moving images were found - 142 of them of the most serious Category A.
Prosecutor Miss Lisa Boocock said: “Across the devices the range of images showed an age range of children starting at seven years going up to about 15 years. Also on the devices was worrying content and it is clear the defendant had been taking covert images of work colleagues.
“Accompanying those was detailed descriptions of exactly of what sex acts the defendant desired of those colleagues, comments about Rohypnol - he worked at a pharmacy comments about abduction and rape of colleagues and fantasy about torture.
“There was a video of him carrying out a sex act whilst looking at a picture of a work colleague plus covert images of children in a school and a list of children who attended at a local school in year eight.”
Defence barrister Benjamin Knight said: “This is a man who from around about 1994 became a recluse at that point he became a student in Salford and was kidnapped and held hostage in his own home at knifepoint.
“He was a victim of somebody who became known as ‘The Snapper’ - he gave evidence in those proceedings and the man received five years for his actions.
“Since then this defendant has spent most of his time at home, in university or at work. He is a man of faith and he has strongly held views about intimate relationships before marriage. He has never been married and is somebody who has had absolutely no output for sexual motivations.
“Sometimes that can lead people in a difficult direction online where mainstream porn is readily available, then on the dark web where that sort of content becomes more available.
“It appears he had begun writing a fantasy story he had stopped writing when he realised his writing had moved from writing about fantasy characters to people in his work setting.
“This is not a man who is creating content in order to upload to the internet. This is a man who is downloading content and who has taken considerable steps to exclude himself from the internet.”